1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a system, method and program product for checking a health of a computer system. Specifically, the present invention utilizes a configurable dictionary to check the conditions of various attributes of a computer system, and to implement any necessary actions.
2. Background Art
As the use of computer technology becomes more prevalent, proper “health” maintenance thereof is essential. Specifically, many of today's business entities utilize computer systems to carry out their everyday functions. However, such computer systems are often compromised for various reasons such as the failure of backup software to execute, anti-virus programs being disabled, unauthorized drive shares being granted, etc. In many of these cases, the losses could be minimized by performing periodic checks of certain attributes within the computer systems. For example, checking the computer systems to verify the existence of certain files, registry entries, values in INI files, sequences of text in files, etc. could lead to early detection of potential problems. Unfortunately, such checks typically require a litany of disparate efforts that rely on the memory of an administrator and/or the coordination of numerous programs. For example, some of these attributes might have to be manually checked by an administrator, while others might be checked by various diagnostic programs. This problem is compounded by the fact that different attributes might have to be checked for different computer systems. This is especially problematic in a network environment where many different computer systems could operate.
Heretofore, many attempts have been made at providing computer system monitoring. None of these attempts, however, have utilized a “configurable” data structure that specifically identifies the attributes to be checked, and how/where to check them. To this extent, none of the previous attempts identify appropriate actions to be implemented based on the results of the checks. Using a configurable data structure would allow “health” checking to be both automated and customized for each computer system in operation. Moreover, it would allow the health checking efforts to be streamlined into one cohesive process.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need for a system, method and program product for checking a health of a computer system. Specifically a need exists for the health of the computer system to be checked based on a configurable dictionary that identifies: (1) attribute conditions of the computer system to be checked; (2) associated locations within the computer system for checking the attribute conditions; and (3) actions to be taken based on results of the checks.